I messed up. There had to be an issue somewhere along this trip. Wayne loves Fort Desoto park in Tierra Verde. The North beach is great for bird photography. So when I was making the reservations for this trip I booked Lake Manatee State Park for 2 nights with the idea when reservations opened for Ft Desoto I would book the 2 nights there and then cancel Lake Manatee. Well…. I reserved Ft Desoto, then hurricanes happened, so we were still in limbo as to where we were going to be staying. Long story short, Ft Desoto campground reopened and we were going to be fine, so I canceled Lake Manatee 2 days before we were suppose to go there. When we arrived at Ft Desoto we find out I only booked 1 night not 2 and the north beach area was still not open. Ugh!! So when we got to our site, which was large and awesome, we started to look for another site for a night and found St Petersburg / Madeira Beach KOA. It all worked out. We enjoyed the day and next morning at Ft Desoto and then moved about 17 miles north to the KOA for the night.
When we left Ft Desoto there was a black haze in the distance off the beach, we did not think much about it. After we checked in and got settled at the KOA we had 2 choices. One to ride our bikes on the Pinellas Trail another Rail to Trail or drive to the beach. The trail runs right next to the KOA. We opted to drive to the beach. As we were driving that was when the fog rolled in. This never happens on the east coast of Florida. On the east coast there is fog but you usually wake up to it and it burns off once the sun comes up. This day in Madeira Beach and North Reddington Beach the fog rolled in once the sun was up and did not clear till late afternoon. It was so insane to not be able to see down the beach. It made for some great photos. It was so good that we decided to come back in the morning before we had to check out of the campground. A local told us about the Seaside Bird Sanctuary that you can get to from the beach side so we went and walked around there for a bit. This area of Florida as well is still recovering from the hurricanes of last year.
We ate at a little local sushi place and went driving north to find the beach where the Black Skimmers nest in the summer and we passed a putt putt golf place and pulled in. Smugglers Cove is a great challenging course with live alligators. Neither of us got a hole-in-one this time. I won by 3 strokes.
Since it was Valentines Day, we stopped at Gulf Coast Seafood Market in Gulfport FL on the way to the our next park to get some fish for dinner. The market was crowded and the fish looked amazing. Will definately be going back when we are in the area.
Wildlife sightings: Snowy Egret, Racoon, spray, Ruddy Turnstone, Sanderling, Willet, gulls, Royal terns, Brown Pelicans, Great Egret (not couting the various birds we saw at the Seaside Bird Sancturay)
Note: All photos and videos unless otherwise stated are property of Wayne and Margaret Shoemake. If you would like to use any of them please email us at [email protected].